The adoption of electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and the like, continues at a rapid pace. The charging infrastructure is still in its infancy and many challenges remain including scaling, efficiency, and cost barriers. Conventional charging and energy distribution systems lack any significant level of built-in intelligence, and as a result, the methods used for charging electric vehicles are usually wasteful and inefficient.
Moreover, as the deployment of electric vehicles increases, the charging infrastructure must be adapted to meet demand. Multi-level parking spaces used in apartment complexes, shopping malls, downtown parking garages, and the like, suffer from a variety of unique problems such as the coordination of charging devices among the various levels. Many such parking spaces are constructed of dense materials such as cement and steel, which impede conventional wireless networking solutions. This in turn diminishes the coordination and communication of different components of a charging system or network, and consequently, the intelligence of such conventional systems are either difficult to implement, too costly to install, or simply impossible.
Accordingly, a need remains for improved methods and systems for efficiently and intelligently distributing energy to electric vehicles. Embodiments of the invention address these and other limitations in the prior art.
The foregoing and other features of the invention will become more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.